A MENACE

2 Corinthians 5:17 (MSG) — 17 Now we look inside, and what we see is that

anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new.

The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!

Missionary

A Missionary’s Heart

A Missionary’s Mind

Galatians 1:11–18 (MSG) — 11 Know this—I am most emphatic here, friends—this great Message I delivered to you is not mere human optimism. 12 I didn’t receive it through the traditions, and I wasn’t taught it in some school. I got it straight from God, received the Message directly from Jesus Christ. 13 I’m sure that you’ve heard the story of my earlier life when I lived in the Jewish way. In those days I went all out in persecuting God’s church. I was systematically destroying it. 14 I was so enthusiastic about the traditions of my ancestors that I advanced head and shoulders above my peers in my career. 15 Even then God had designs on me. Why, when I was still in my mother’s womb he chose and called me out of sheer generosity! 16 Now he has intervened and revealed his Son to me so that I might joyfully tell non-Jews about him. Immediately after my calling—without consulting anyone around me 17 and without going up to Jerusalem to confer with those who were apostles long before I was—I got away to Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus, 18 but it was three years before I went up to Jerusalem to compare stories with Peter. I was there only fifteen days—but what days they were!

Philippians 3:6 (MSG) — 6 a fiery defender of the purity of my religion,

even to the point of persecuting the church;

a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.

A Missionary’s Adversaries.

A Missionary’s Loneliness.

Romans 8:28 (MSG) — 28 That’s why we can be so sure that every detail

in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

A Missionary’s Resilience. Acts 9:27-30

A Missionary’s Furlough

Acts 22:17–21 (MSG) — 17 “Well, it happened just as Ananias said. After I was back in Jerusalem and praying one day in the Temple, lost in the presence of God, 18 I saw him, saw God’s Righteous Innocent, and heard him say to me, ‘Hurry up! Get out of here as quickly as you can. None of the Jews here in Jerusalem are going to accept what you say about me.’ 19 “At first I objected: ‘Who has better credentials? They all know how obsessed I was with hunting out those who believed in you, beating them up in the meeting places and throwing them in jail. 20 And when your witness Stephen was murdered, I was right there, holding the coats of the murderers and cheering them on. And now they see me totally converted. What better qualification could I have?’ 21 “But he said, ‘Don’t argue. Go. I’m sending you on a long journey to outsider non-Jews.’ ”